Before every Olympics since 1988, the U.S. Olympic Committee has invited the press to a Media Summit — hosted this year in Chicago’s Palmer House Hilton from September 9-12, with 80 winter sport athletes in attendance.

The event is held a few months before the Games and is a chance for reporters, broadcasters, and anyone else lucky enough to have secured an Olympic media credential to get the athletes’ stories before they are standing on the podium with the Star Spangled Banner playing. It’s also a great time to discover those little nuggets that bring an athlete’s story alive.

Like Tony Benshoof. The 34-year-old luger from White Bear Lake, Minnesota, spent a few days this summer with his high school buddies in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. There, Benshoof — who finished fourth in luge at the 2006 Torino Olympics — and five friends dug up the time capsule that they buried by Lake One (“See if you can find it,” Benshoof chuckled). Inside it were notes they had written when they were 18.

“We wrote letters to ourselves hypothesizing about what we would be doing in 10 years,” he said.

Benshoof’s letter to himself asked questions such as, “Will I go to the Olympics? Will I ever medal?”

Although he has answered the first question (yes) but not yet the second, he says he was drawn to the fact that he had a lot of love for the sport even back then, “before I blossomed and got a lot better.”

Then there’s three-time Olympian Daron Rahlves, 36, who retired after the 2006 Olympic season. With 12 World Cup wins, a World Championship title, and 28 podium finishes — but no Olympic medals — to his name, he remains the most successful male downhill skier in U.S. history.

After the last Olympic race of his long career — the giant slalom in Torino, which he didn’t finish — Rahlves lingered near the finish.

“I was trying to cool down a little bit emotionally,” he explained. “I figured (the GS) was my last shot at (the Olympics), and I went out in my first run. The way my season was going, everything was in my favor. I was on top of my game, and I had that outcome. It just sucked. It was pretty devastating. I was mad and just shaking my head.”

But as he stood fuming near the finish, Rahlves started noticing the guys with the higher bib numbers who were still finishing their Olympic GS runs (in alpine racing, the higher the bib, the higher the seed) and suddenly had a change in perspective.

“It’s not just always about performing and winning,” he realized. “I was looking at guys who were just there competing and how much fun they were having and just having that chance to see what (they’ve) got. I thought that was really cool.”

Rahlves may have a chance to experience this perspective in his fourth Olympics. He is aiming to represent the U.S. Ski Team in skiercross, which debuts as an Olympic sport in Vancouver in February 2010.

Then there’s the personal side of Media Summit, where you realize that being in the media scrum could be an event in itself (and in some cases, a full contact sport).

While trying to get a quote from Mark Johnson — 1980 hockey player … two goals scored against the Soviets … that Mark Johnson — my toes fell victim to another reporter’s pointy-toed wing-tips. 

Johnson is now the coach of the 1980 U.S. women’s hockey team, which hopes to re-find the magic that led to a gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympic Winter Games (the U.S. women have since won silver and bronze at successive Winter Olympics). In the media pack surrounding Johnson, I could have used a hockey stick myself (although checking isn’t allowed in women’s hockey).

Or steel-toed shoes.